New Idea For the White Side of the Ruy Lopez?

I played this variation against Crafty, and it gave me a bigger advantage than the most commonly played lines. It seems to offer some really nice kingside play. The main idea is to develop the dark-square bishop with b3 and Bb2. Surprisingly, I've only found one other game played with this line.

Nice, Im in a tournamen at the moment caleed the ruy lopez, I will come and look at this a lot......lol

First.

Interesting variation which allows good fianchettoed bishop. Maybe some refutation is available to black but I can not see one

Actually, gambit13, my engine would rather be playing on the white side here. I'm still amazed by how rare this is, because it offers a rather fun game.

I didn't say black is better. How much does your computer give an advantage to white

The advantage is somewhere between +0.2 and +0.3, which is significant since the main lines only give dead equality, it seems.

I'm pretty sure your engine is very much wrong if it thinks that mainline Ruy gives dead equality.

My engine doesn't necessarily, but I do. In fact, I think black is a little better. Seems I always run out of play and Crafty just marches that accursed c-pawn. JUST MY THOUGHTS. The engine does have an extremely high elo. 2600-2700? It was searching over 2 million nodes per second.

The Ruy is universally accepted to be White's best try against Black's second-most-common response to 1.e4. You and/or your engine are completely dead wrong if either of you think White doesn't get any advantage in it.

http://checkersisfortramps.blogspot.com/2007/01/fischer-article-on-death-of-kings.html

A quote from the article:

"Spassky told me himself the gambit doesn't give White much, but he plays it because neither does the Ruy Lopez nor the Giuoco Piano."

1.  18 full moves without a piece off the board!

2.  The lack of either side in staking a claim to d5 this far into the game is troublesome.

3.  For white, having the two knights on the kingside without support up the board and the rest of the pieces mostly queenside is also troublesome.

4.  Black's rook on the b-file could prove to be important, at the least it will influence white's designs on getting the black-squared bishop into a positive role.

Maybe once the position opens up in the middle game through the tactical attrition that is imminent, the knights can find a hospitable home on the 6th rank center/kingside - that may be one route to take.

I disagree with gambit13 that black fianchettoing the bishop is good, since the diagonal is littered with pawns at the moment, but anything is possible in this position - I have a feeling that the black kingside pawn structure won't look the same for too long, though.

There were so many weak looking moves played after b3 that it's hard to know what you're talking about here.  It seems pretty obvious to me that if Black is going to line up his QB behind all of those pawns, putting it out of play that black ought to be looking at ripping on the king side with a quick or timely ....f5.  However, after playing his rook off of the f file that plan becomes moot.  After that the game started looking just dopey. 

Actually that variation comes from the Prior defense in the Ruy Lopez and the fiancheto of the dark squared white's bishop it's not so rare, i've saw that vaeiation in a few youtube videos by chess website or stuff like that, im not trying to disgregard your creativity, because if you did saw that variation your a truly knower of the ruy lopez!

b3 can be useful in the Chigorin variation but I think you're playing it prematurely and it gives white fewer options, e.g. playing it to b4 later to kick the knight out (after black has played c4) loses a tempo, or after black playing b4 your c-pawn is not protected by a pawn and your central structure is undermined so you have to exchange, you deny your bishop or queen access to a4 which might become important once you move your pawn there, etc. A bishop on b2 could become strong, but if you play it this early black may just never capture on d4 leaving your bishop useless. The idea is nice, but retaining more flexibility by developing the knight first seems better.

Hey thanks, Fezzik and darkschyte, for the kind comments.

I love how everyone thinks this is a horrible idea.  When I get to my laptop I'll post the whole game I played and the other game I found at 365chess.com--played between two 2600's where a draw was achieved. Yes, polydiatonic, you are also calling the play of a 2600+ FIDE rated player weak. The whole crap load of maintaining flexibility is junk. There are other ideas being put in effect here. In fact, it is to maintain flexibility, in the center and with the knight, that the knight is not developed first. The bishop is not ever intended to be kept on that diagonal, so it makes sense to develop it first.

There are interesting central and kingside tactics in this line, Fezzik, as you'll see when I post the game I played.

Oh, and polydiatonic, playing b4 in response to that early c4 is a blunder. Black does not really want to give white an open a-file with cxb3, so c4 at that point is a pointless move since it accomplishes nothing for black on its own--white must blunder in order for black to get anything out of it.

But, anyway, I still appreciate all the comments. Please take your hatrid somewhere else, though!

12 b3 is certainly not new and my database gives 18 games with it and some of the players conducting white are very well known : Kasparov, Ivanchuk, Leonid Stein, it does ok for white with 53% but the move Fischer played against Keres scores over 60% :  12 dc5 and the most played move 12 Nbd2 scores 57%. 

Why not! I have looking few games with 12.b3 and the verdict is not clear : 32 games 2400+ (+7/=19/-7) and 26 game 1900-2400 (+13/=8/-5). I have not including a game who's one player is very more better. White is a little better when Black's open the center (pawn d6 isolated) and when this is close, Black have some play in the Queenside (or restrain the White standard play in the Kingside). Finally, i'm think that's playable for White, but not some little opening preparation. For me, i'm play 12.Cbd2, but why not... Good studies EminenceGrise.

Grandroque, What what?  Who said that it's unplayable?  When  a NM speaks it doesn't mean he's going to be right all of the time, but you'd do best to close the mouth, open the ears and the mind and pay attention to the answer.  You might learn something..